It occurs to me…

“For my son was dead, and is alive again; he was lost, and is found.  And they began to be merry.”  Luke 15:24

Reading this today made me think of renewal – death to life, lost to found….  It occurs to me that I go through many renewals each day, renewals in thinking, in perceptions, in attitudes and beliefs – at least on good days I do.  Some days I relentlessly cling to those old thoughts, beliefs, perceptions with the unwavering certainty that the way things are, at least the way I see and understand them, is the way they are and ought to be – period.  It is difficult for renewal to squeeze in through a closed door.

“Astonishing material and revelation appear in our lives all the time….  We just have to be open for business.”  Anne Lamott

The revelations surround me, or the opportunities for revelation surround me, but as Lamott notes, unless I recognize them as such, acknowledge their presence, unless I am “open for business,” the revelations are not realized, they are just things or occurrences often perceived as obstacles in my way – MY way.  The sunrise I ignore on the way to the airport to catch an early flight or the sunset view from the plane I ignore on the flight back — so many opportunities for “astonishing material and revelation [to] appear in our lives” are missed because we are not truly “open for business.”  Am I “open for business?”  I fear I am more like the shop owner who decides each day just what type customers I will allow into the store.  Today, I will allow in left-handed blonde males under six feet tall not wearing a hat.  Tomorrow, it is black-haired females wearing some red article of clothing and brown shoes.  And I wonder why business is slow!

This today from Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow:

“Most of us figure out by a certain age – some of us later than others – that life unspools in cycles, some lovely, some painful, but in no predictable order.  So you could have lovely, painful, and painful again, which I think we all agree is not at all fair.  You don’t have to like it, and you are always welcome to file a brief with the Complaints Department.  But if you’ve been around awhile, you know that much of the time, if you are patient and are paying attention, you will see that God will restore what the locusts have taken away.”

This rings true to me on many fronts, but the two most significant things that jump out of the text for me are 1) “if you are patient” and 2) “if you are paying attention.”  I suppose these jump out at me as I rarely meet either condition.  Still, I think it is true that “much of the time” (not all of the time) “God will restore what the locusts have taken away.”  The restoration may not be exactly the same, and let’s face it, it isn’t always to my tastes, preferences, or likings, but it is restoration nonetheless.  Be patient.  Pay attention.

This quote from Christian Wiman, By Love We Are Led to God, was tossed my way:

“[Y]ou must not swerve from the engagements God offers you. These will occur in the most unlikely places, and with people for whom your first instinct may be aversion.”

I like that.  “[T]he engagements God offers you” sounds so much better than the way I often see it – “the shit life throws my way.”  But Wiman is correct.  These engagements, these opportunities (even when not readily seen as such), are from God, and they often occur in unexpected places.  They often, frequently even, come from people I would not have predicted to be the source, from people I would just as soon have avoided.  All of which, I guess, goes to show you what little I know, or at least understand.

More from Anne Lamott in Help, Thanks, Wow, this at the conclusion of the “Help” part:

“Praying ‘Help’ means that we ask Something give us courage to stop in our tracks, right where we are, and turn our fixation away from the Gordian knot of our problems.  We…turn our eyes to something else: to our feet on the sidewalk, to the middle distance, to the hills…someplace else, anything else.  Maybe this is a shift of only eight degrees, but it can be a miracle.

It may be one of those miracles where your heart sinks, because it thinks you have lost.  But in surrender you have won.”

I think Lamott has this about right.  Sometimes, until that “Help” request comes from within me, my insistence on doing things (cue up Sinatra) my way blinds me to any possible path or outcome other than the one developed in my head.    Merely (merely?) asking for “help” takes me away from that foolish thought just long enough to let some light in, as they say, through the crack.  In that sense, the miracle is not necessarily the ultimate outcome, but that I softened my hard-headedness just long enough to consider that I might possibly be wrong, or (I like this option better) at least that I may not know everything.

More on prayer from Anne Lamott in Help, Thanks, Wow:

“The response probably won’t be from God, in the sense of hearing a deep, grandfatherly voice, or via skywriting, on in the form of an LED-lit airplane aisle at your feet.  But the mail will come, or an e-mail, or the phone will ring; unfortunately, it might not be later today, ideally right after lunch, but you will hear back.  You will come to know.”

 “The response probably won’t be from God….”  No, but it will be OF God.  Too often I miss the answer to prayer because it is not my desired answer, not the answer I wanted, the answer I had hoped for.  It is easy to let prayer slip into what I call the vending machine mode – to pray for a particular outcome, result, or resolution, to push a particular button and then judge God’s responsiveness by what pops out of the chute — whether He delivers exactly what I prayed for.  On reflection, that seem a bit silly when petitioning an all-knowing God (and why pray to any other type?).  What comes to mind is a person on the street seeking handouts and deciding that today, he/she will ask for and accept a specific currency or coinage – say Friday is one dollar bill day.  If anyone offers a five, a ten, a twenty, or coins, it is rejected and returned.  A sandwich or something to drink, no way, that’s not what was asked for.  How crazy would that be?  Yet when the answer to my prayer comes from an unwanted source or takes a form not wholly consistent with my expectations….

More on prayer from Anne Lamott, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers:

“Most good, honest prayers remind me that I am not in charge, that I cannot fix anything, and that I open myself to being helped by something, some force, some friends, some something.  These prayers say, “Dear Some Something, I don’t know what I am doing.  I can’t see where I’m going.  I’m getting more lost, more afraid, more clenched.  Help., but something else isn’t.

These prayers acknowledge that I am clueless.”

There’s a theme here, I think, which I can pick up on if I dwell on it enough.  Not a theme that settles well within my “if you want it done right, do it yourself” self, but a theme nonetheless.

I am never too far from having a Radney Foster song rolling in my head.  This one popped in there today as a result of a conversation with a friend – from Half My Mistakes:

“…And if I had it all to do over

I’d prob’ly win and lost just as much

But I’d spend less time on the right and wrong

And a lot more time on the love”

That makes sense to me, but it occurs to me that there’s no need to wait on the “do over.” Now, particularly now, in these right and wrong, red or blue, with me or against me times, is a better time than any to start spending less time on right and wrong, and a lot more time on love .  And if I’m wrong, well, I don’t think much has been lost.

Right/Wrong/Love — Pick one.

In a circuitous way, I came upon this Thomas Merton prayer I have seen before, and it reminds me of the basic components of prayer – surrender, connection, and trust.

“My lord God, I have no idea where I am going.  I do not see the road ahead for me.  I cannot know for certain where it will end, nor do I really know myself, and that fact that I think I am following your will does not mean that I am actually doing so.”

You have to love any prayer that begins with “I have no idea where I am going,” which in its plain truth contains the surrender necessary in any good prayer.  And in case God did not get the surrender the first time, Merton lays it on more.  I don’t know where I am going.  I can’t see what’s ahead of me.  I don’t even know where the road ends.  In fact, now that I think about it I am not even sure of who I am or what I am doing.

Implicitly, Merton is saying (I have heard people do this) that he has tried to do this on his own, has finally recognized his own limitations, and is reaching out for help, making room for God to step in.

I wonder if all this part of the prayer could be shortened to a few words and a gesture?

[Flat-handed slap to the forehead] Duh!  Here I am again?

“And he was angry, and would not go in; therefore came his father out, and intreated him.  And he answering said to his father….”  Luke 15:28-29 KJV

Or, in Petersen’s The Message:

“The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in.  His father came out and tried to talk to him, but he wouldn’t listen.  The son said….”

In reading this I am reminded how easy it is to not do the right thing straight up.  Something happens, and for one reason or another, I miss the clue and do not immediately respond appropriately.  Here, the older brother could easily have joined the party, but it can be someone conveying a sadness I brush aside or don’t respond to, an explained wrong I ignore and move the conversation to something I want to talk about….  Luckily, when I miss the first prompt, there are almost always other opportunities to do the right thing, chances to circle back.  This is where pride can get in the way, and I can continue down my chosen path knowing that to go back is to admit my missing the opportunity the first time.

The downward spiral is obvious here.  How might things have been different had the elder son said: “Dad, you’re right.  I was being a bit foolish there.  Let’s go join the party?”

In this I am reminded of one of my favorite quotes, from Felix Frankfurter:  “Wisdom too often never comes, and so one ought not to reject it merely because it comes late.”